After technical difficulties plagued the game's first major national event, Niantic responded with deep regret for the issues that arose.

In celebration of the one year anniversary of the game’s release, Chicago’s Pokemon GO Fest offered the chance for players of the massively popular mobile title to come together and catch rare Pokemon, though the event didn’t exactly go as planned due to massive technical difficulties on the weekend of the event.

In a report from Polygon, developer Niantic provided a few comments in response to last weekend’s Pokemon GO Fest, which was hampered by widespread technical issues in which a large portion of players couldn’t access the game due to server errors and bugs.

A spokesperson for Niantic at the event explained that “obviously [Niantic] can’t completely make it up to all the people who have come out to Chicago today, but they want to extend the fact that they’re extremely apologetic and unhappy with the process and the results.” The representative added that “hopefully this is something that we will never see replicated again, learn from this and move on,” while also explaining that the staff during the event were “horrified with the results” of the mass connectivity issues.

In light of the setbacks by the game’s technical issues during the event itself, Niantic did provide compensation for players of the event in the form of full refunds for their admission to the event, along with $100 in PokeCoin currency to use on in-game items and bonuses during the event.

Ryan is the Features Editor at DualShockers, with over five years' experience in the world of video games culture and writing. He holds a BA in English & Cinema from Binghamton University, and lives in New York City.